As part of the Frontiers for Young Minds program, a group of TKS students were invited to attend COP16 (hosted by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh in December 2024), to take part in a live review of a research paper written by KAUST faculty member, Professor Salim AlBabili.
The theme of COP16 was “Our Land… Our Future”, so Professor AlBabili’s paper “Towards SDG1: Helping small farmers in degraded land regions by saving crops from parasitic weeds”, aligned well with the discussions taking place at the event.
Professor AlBabili presented his work to the audience, and then the young reviewers (having already read the paper), asked questions, to further understand and clarify the content and message of the paper. Based on his feedback, the young reviewers were able to endorse the paper for publication (subject to some minor adjustments).
KAUST (in partnership with the UNDP, Saudi Arabia) is currently developing a collection for the Frontiers for Young Minds journal, aligned with the UN SDGs. The KAUST faculty are sharing information about their research, and how it supports the achievement of the UN SDGs, with a young reading audience.
Frontiers for Young Mind’s mission is to make knowledge about cutting-edge science discoveries accessible to younger audiences, and to connect scientists with school students so they can work together to create articles that are both top quality and of interest and value to a young audience. There are now many articles and collections in the FFYM journal, and the KAUST’s UN SDG Collection has already had 94,589 views! 7 articles are already published in the collection and we are on track to have all 17 published by Summer 2025 – all reviewed by TKS students.
All the photos and videos from our exciting day at COP16 can be found here.
For more information about the UNDP Saudi Arabia, click here.
For more information about Frontiers for Young Minds, click here.